noise."Story Notes: Cause of Death · 1:35pm Sep 14th, 2019
So this one was written for Quills and Sofas fic contest a little while back. A week or two.
There were three prompt words, and you had to use two of them. The three words were accidental, denied, and intertwined.
Since I’m an overachiever, I naturally used all three.
The problem was the word count.
The contest required one thousand words, no more, no less.
The other problem is that I’m a discovery writer.
Now, for those of you who don’t know what that is, it means that I do little plotting up front. I generally get an image in my head from somewhere in the story and build around that. For example, in Flower Fight, I had the vision of the two mares fighting, came up with some good insults, and wrapped a beginning and end onto it.
I could talk at length about fitting those little snippets into story form, and perhaps one day I will. Here’s one that came to mind yesterday, a scene where a young unicorn mare is presented, and the announcer says “and her special talent is heating Hot Pockets evenly.” (I thought of that one around lunchtime.) No idea what kind of a story that might fit into, so that’s an idea I’ll probably not do anything with.
So when I saw those three words together, the first thing that came to mind was a crime scene. A crime scene equals a murder mystery, and those can be fun.
Those can also probably be written in a thousand words--exactly--by a talented author.
To my mind, this story lacks satisfaction. When you get to the end (and it won’t take long; it’s only a thousand words), there isn’t a sense of completion, just a bunch of unanswered questions.
Now, that can work; I certainly have left my readers and even myself with questions at the end of a story because it worked for that story.
I’m less sure that it works for this story. There’s at least one plot point that I expect most readers would wish to be resolved, and it isn’t. Maybe the detective is happy at the end because he got his conviction, but most readers won’t be.
tsaukpaetra often comments on my stories ‘keep going,’or words to that effect, and this is a story where I should have--where I would have if not for the word count.
And, since I knew the word count was going to be an issue going in, I left things light. I glossed over stuff, in some cases where I don’t necessarily have all the answers, not yet.
So why publish?
I’m glad you asked. And in fact, I’ve been debating this back and forth since I wrote it. I mean, I could have stuffed it into one of my collections, Half-Baked Biscuits for its incompleteness (from a storytelling perspective), or into Not Another Speedwriting Fic, ‘cause that’s what it is.
Neither of those felt like the right choice, though.
I could have also fleshed it out. Maybe tossed the 1k version in the notes, or as its own chapter, for all y’all who want to get a look at a work in progress. But right now I don’t have time for that, and I don’t know when I will, and there’s a good chance it would get lost in my gDrive, never to resurface. Here, on my story page, I’ll see it and maybe it’ll keep bugging me; maybe one day I’ll fleshing it out into the story it could have been.
Until then, I hope you enjoyed what little there was.
--admiral biscuit
Nice
After reading the notes the story's brevity now makes sense... I had been bemused as, like you mentioned, if it had been a speedfic I'd have expected it to be there.
And there's the reason... Well, may it do so as it seems far to good a premise to have it stymied by artificial restrictions... but then again, good detective/mystery/procedural stories are a long established artform of their own and it can be hard to write a standout in that field without resorting to shock tactics or debasing your characters.
First!Second!Third!
I was kind of surprised ponies had the death penalty, to be honest.
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Thanks!
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Yeah, and I should have thought of it; I’m just always assume that readers will click through to the blog--and many do--but for essential information, best that it’s on the story itself, either in the author’s note box or in the first comment.
I feel like I could do it--I mean, I guess I won’t know unless I try, but I’ve read lots of Robert B. Parker and Ed McBain and a few other mystery authors, as well. Honestly, even leaving it fairly short but hitting some more important details would help flesh out the story greatly, without it becoming a full-length novel.
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Do they?
I don’t think I implied that, did I? And I can’t think of a canon example of it, but then I’m not caught up on the show or the comics (I have read the one where Luna longs to banish miscreants, though).
5123290 The judge sentenced him to death, right?
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Oh.
Yeah, he did. Heh, I forgot that was there.
Well, he murdered at least on innocent pony, so. . . .
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You're welcome